DoIT Offers Monthly PIVOT Webinars During Summer

Focus will be on FA20 Preparations

Based on higher than expected turnout for last week’s prototype of the Planning Instructional Technology for Online Teaching (PIVOT) Live webinars, DoIT is offering a monthly repeat of the five 60-minute webinars in five days approach on the following dates (up to 100 people can participate, but registration via myUMBC is required).

June 22 to 26 at 10 a.m.

July 20 to 24  at 10 a.m. (canceled)

August 10 to 14 at 12:00 p.m.

The PIVOT webinars will include the following topics:

  • Organizing & Designing an Online Course 

  • Active Learning Strategies

  • Engaging Students & Building Online Community

  • Reconceptualizing Online Assessments

  • Supporting Students and Monitoring Progress

As a reminder, last week’s webinars on these topics were recorded and available on the original announcement and DoIT’s Academic Continuity site (a PIVOT site is also under development). The recordings will also be paired with key instructional technology FAQs to form the basis of PIVOT Solo, which is designed as a totally asynchronous, self-paced to enable a more deliberate approach to online teaching than was the case in Spring 2020. 

Last week’s turnout for the first prototype of the PIVOT webinars included the following:

  • We had 1,030 registrations with 764 attendees for one or more sessions (72 people attended all 5 sessions and accounted for 360 attendees).

  • There were 263 unique participants during the week, 122 of whom are teaching this summer, which was our most pressing need.

  • To date, we've received 100 survey responses from the 263, and  77% rated the webinars as helpful, 8% not-helpful.

As discipline-specific or cohort-based plans develop within Colleges, DoIT will use the PIVOT webinars & PIVOT Solo “playlists” to support such groups, which will inform the synchronous and asynchronous approach of PIVOT + that was previously announced.

In addition to new monthly offerings of PIVOT during the summer, DoIT’s Instructional Technology team has also announced focused training in Blackboard Essentials, Collaborate, Panopto, and VoiceThread, which were popular topics throughout the week. To learn more, visit DoIT’s training site at doit.umbc.edu/training.

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

Request a consult with instructional technology staff





Posted: May 12, 2020, 2:59 PM